FARMINGTON – An automatic door closer and a hinge alleged to be responsible for the loss of part of a little girl’s finger last year will be made available to the girl’s representatives in a lawsuit against SAD 9.
In Franklin County Superior Court on Friday, Justice Joseph Jabar ordered that the equipment be made available. The closing device and hinge are in the custody of the district’s maintenance department and were previously withheld from the girl’s attorney.
However, Jabar ruled against 8-year-old Michaela Hutchinson’s attorney, Gerald Williams, who sought to gain depositions from school witnesses prior to the proceedings.
Jennie Hutchinson, the Industry girl’s mother, said her daughter had gotten her finger caught in a heavy, automatically closing bathroom door at W.G. Mallett School on Sept. 16, 2004. A broken hinge was “sharp as a razor” and cut Michaela’s left ring finger nearly to the first knuckle, she said last week.
Her suit against the school district and then-Principal Melvin Burnham claims the principal’s slow response delayed her daughter’s care and made saving the girl’s amputated finger impossible. The severed digit was not found until later the same day, she said.
The suit also claims that district personnel were aware of the defective door but did nothing to repair it before the Sept. 16 incident. Another student had sustained the near-amputation of a finger in a similarly defective door at the school in 1999.
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